Management of Groups of Passengers on Buses Considering the Restrictions of COVID-19

During the epidemiological emergency, the measures adopted by the governments to contain the spread of the virus have caused heavy changes in the passenger transportation sector. In this work, we address the problem of managing groups of passengers on buses considering COVID-19-related restrictions. We propose a linear integer programming model to represent mathematically the bus group assignment problem, whose main aim is to make the best seat-passenger assignment, in such a way that the social distancing constraints, imposed for containing the spread of COVID-19, are satisfied. The developed formulation, accordingly to the current Italian rules, considers not only the physical distancing among passengers, but also the possibility to allocate household groups close to one another. The proposed model is tested empirically considering a real case study of a bus company operating in Italy. The computational results reveal that our model could help the transportation company to effectively manage the capacity, improve customer service, and maintain the social distancing in order to prevent the risk of contagion, by maximizing the revenue.